


Burn Out Bright

by Tabithian



Series: Light the Path [34]
Category: Batman (Comics), DCU, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-12
Updated: 2015-12-12
Packaged: 2018-05-06 08:58:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5410814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tabithian/pseuds/Tabithian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tim knows from personal experience that stars aren't the only things born out here in the black of space.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burn Out Bright

**Author's Note:**

> Themandylion asked for Tim and Steph (or Damian) and the letter O for spacefic, and then this happened because reasons. *hands*

Backwater colony planets like this one, it pays not to stand out, be memorable.

Place like this doesn't have a name to identify it, just a series of numbers and letters and a point on a celestial map somewhere, spot in a computer database.

Little point in a larger map, mines drying up as the companies who own them strip them for all they're worth, never having learned their lesson from what happened to Earth.

Drying up, turning into a dirtball of a planet and then the companies will move on, find another planet to kill and call it good because it's not like anyone was living there before, right? Who cares about the people who can't afford to move on after the mines go dry, there's a million more like them.

The companies lose interest, and the Consortium isn't about to waste vital resources and manpower policing some colony world with a population as small as theirs that should be able to do for themselves.

And that's a mistake no one ever seems to learn from, because smugglers and pirates and all the big fish with sharp, sharp teeth love places like this, planets like this.

They set up shop, take over a nice little piece of real estate and never, ever let go.

********

Tim sees the kid wending his way through the marketplace, one of the K-9 units at his heels. A bit beat up, sure, but it's a newer make. One of the ones the military stripped down to sell to interested parties in the private sector, various law enforcement agencies and the idle rich.

The kid moves like he has somewhere to be but doesn't know where, exactly, scanning the stalls and booths as he walks. He's wearing a shabby little cloak over his clothes, but it doesn't do much to hide the fact that what he's wearing is a cut above most of the people he's surrounded by.

“Kid's asking to get robbed.”

Tim slides a look to where Steph's perched on a packing crate, tracking the kid's progress.

She's looking right back at him, bland little smile on her face.

“No,” Tim says. “Steph, no. We have enough trouble as it is, we don't need to be adding more.“

The things they do is more than enough for half the people here to kill them a dozen times over if they ever find out. 

“Look at him,” Steph counters. “You know he's not from here, and the transports aren't due for another three days.”

Supplies and equipment the governor requisitioned months ago finally making their way out here. New blood for the mines, people with nowhere else to go looking to find something out here, start a new life. (Tim knows from personal experience that stars aren't the only things born out here in the black of space.)

Steph raises her eyebrows, and Tim.

There had been a lovely little light show a few nights ago. 

Not new, really, in a place like this where smugglers and pirates tend to settle arguments with a little applied violence in the vacuum of space. 

Something like a meteor shower, shining and glittering cutting through the atmosphere a short time later. If enough makes it to the surface intact, it can result in decent salvage for whoever comes across the wreckage afterwards. 

Not like anyone in the settlement is going to be asking questions.

Tim shifts, feels the pinprick of tiny metal claws on his shoulder and looks down to see Laslow hunkering down.

Laslow's a cobbled together mishmash of scraps and circuitry Tim had been able to put together over the years. Small and fast with a limited AI and a bag full of tricks, and Tim still doesn't know why he made him. (A lie, but one more out here won't make a difference.)

“This is going to end in tears,” Tim predicts.

His, probably, with the slow smirk that spreads over Steph's face.

Tim sighs, and Laslow chitters at him, soft golden glow of his eyes brightening when he realizes Tim's giving in.

Tim picks the little robot off his shoulder and crouches to set him down.

“You know what to do,” Tim says, giving Laslow a pat on the head. “Go to work, boy.”

He gets a little snort and a disdainful look for that and then Laslow gives himself a little shake before slipping away from them. Tim loses sight of him soon after, carbon fiber of his armored frame blending into the shadows.

“Good choice,” Steph says, low, quiet, as she darts in to press a kiss against his cheek. “I'll see you in a bit.”

Tim gives her a look, exasperated and fond, and a moment later the booming barks of a K-9 hunter breaks over the usual noise of the marketplace followed by yelling.

Loud, angry, headed away from the heart of the marketplace.

He watches the kid run off after the K-9 unit, watches a few of the less savory faces he recognizes trail after him.

Steph flashes a smile at Tim as she turns to weave her way through hustle and bustle of the marketplace, falling in just behind the looming figures who go after the kid and his K-9.

Sinking feeling as Tim recognizes said faces.

“Tears,” Tim says. “So many tears.”

********

Steph has everything in hand by the time Tim meets up with them.

The thugs are all down, one of them twitching, little lines of electricity crawling over him which means Laslow lent a hand there.

Steph is looking smug and pleased with herself and the kid is muttering to himself, back turned to Tim as he fusses over the K-9. 

“Late to the party like always,” Steph greets him, smiling cheerfully.

Tim rolls his eyes as he looks over the kid who stands, one hand braced on his K-9's shoulder when he turns to face Tim.

Tim, who finally gets a clear look at his face and suddenly wishes he hadn't, because there's no way this can possibly end well.

“Oh.”

He can feel the look Steph's giving him, sharp, hear Laslow's worried little chirrup, but -

“ _Drake_?”

\- Damian's looking back at him, startled.

Damian _Wayne_ , and now that little light show takes on a new meaning, as do the unconscious thugs scattered around the alley.

Faces Tim had recognized because they work for some very big, dangerous fish in these waters.

********

Steph and Damian are staring at Tim, who is steadfastly looking anywhere but at them. Laslow is pressed close against his neck making low, worried noises.

They're in the little shop Tim operates with Steph. Small, cluttered, unremarkable among the other small shops on the same street. More than that, it's shielded against listening and tracking devices - 

Well, most listening and tracking devices.

Tim's had to compromise, allow certain exemptions for the few hard-won allies he has here. Paranoid, al of them, and for good reason.

A safer spot to talk than some dirty back alley surrounded by unconscious thugs and goons.

Steph grabs his arm the moment the door the shop closes behind them, and Tim winces at the expression on her face when he looks at her.

“Steph - “

She knows, a little, of what Tim's life was like before he came to this dirtball of a planet, has seen some of the scars. 

She just doesn't know...this.

But Damian's butting in, pushing into Tim's space and glaring up at him, Steph giving ground for now. 

A quick looks shows the K-9 sitting by the door, and Tim realizes it's focused on him.

“Is that Titus?”

Damian makes an annoyed sound, so familiar. “Of course it is, who else would it be?”

And Tim doesn't know, really. It's been years since he's seen Damian, Titus. 

...any of the others.

“You re-cored him.”

Titus had started out in a smaller frame, less...imposing. 

More socially acceptable for a young boy in Damian's unique position.

A gift from Bruce, trying to reach out to his son, with a little bit of tweaking on Tim's end.

Something passes over Damian's face too quickly to make sense of.

“It was necessary,” Damian says haltingly, eyes sliding away from Tim's. 

Tim looks at Damian.

A little older than the last time Tim saw him in person, but still so young, and Tim remembers what it was like, in the core worlds.

Political intrigue and maneuvering, compromises that weren't, the kind of life that chipped away at you day by day by day. 

The kind of life that could get you killed if you didn't play the game well enough.

Putting Titus' memory core into a bigger, stronger, meaner frame couldn't have been an easy decision when it would be seen as weakness, relying on him for some measure of protection. 

The only real difference between that life and the one Tim's living now is that he can count on the fact that he'll be able to see his enemies coming this time around.

“What are you doing out here?” Tim asks, already knowing whatever the answer is, he won't like it.

Damian looks at him, eyes narrowing as he glances at Steph.

“There was...”

Damian stops, hand reaching up to rub at his eyes for a moment.

“We were on a goodwill tour for the Consortium,” Damian says, like the very though offends him. “Grayson had taken ill and insisted I accompany Father. When the convoy we were traveling attracted... unwanted attention, Father arranged for me to come here.” 

There are missing pieces to that story. Gaping holes just about right for a space battle visible from the ground, Damian making his way to the settlement with Titus trotting along beside him, but Damian just looks at him.

And Tim.

He'd thought he was done with that life, but that's just another lie because he'd been funneling information back to Bruce and the others for years. Nothing groundbreaking, earth-shattering, just numbers and movement of the smuggling and piracy groups out this far. Ones rumored to have ties to important representatives of the Consortium.

Whatever he and Steph managed to come across.

Stupidly, foolishly, Tim had thought Bruce hadn't known it was him all that time.

“Where's Bruce?”

Damian raises his chin, forces his hands to unclench out of the fists they've formed. There's something vulnerable in his eyes as he says, “I don't know.”

********

Tim knows the settlement like the back of his hand, knows all kinds of shortcuts so it's easy enough to make his way to the south side of the settlement. Through the crumbling walls that were part of the original settlement and the old prefabricated buildings the first colonists used, abandoned years ago.

He's alone, Steph and Laslow keeping Damian and Titus safe, hidden from prying eyes.

Tim knows he's being watched, can feel eyes on him as he moves, and does his best to ignore the little itch starting up between his shoulder blades. Keeps his hands well clear of the weapons he's carrying. 

It's impossible to survive out here without making alliances, compromising, but the weight of it doesn't drag Tim down the way it used to. Things he can live with.

The settlement's large, sprawling, a blot on the planet that can be seen from space, like come kind of cancerous growth.

There are sections that most people – the smart ones - avoid.

Territories.

The streets are dusty, windblown. The buildings around him are in varying states of decay, rotting away, and if you weren't paying attention you'd think that's all there is to the old settlement these days.

The prefabricated buildings of the original colony are abandoned, rotting away, but they were only meant to be a temporary settlement. 

Tim makes his way to the heart of the ghost town, ignoring his audience as he slips sideways through a pair of half-open doors into what used to be a lab. Broken equipment litters the interior, along with dust and tiny bones from some local scavenger, long dead.

Tim passes through another doorway and counts his step, careful. He's lost his tail, looming shadows just outside the main entrance to the lab, and turns to an old computer console.

There's a fine layer of dirt covering it, and Tim feels the corner of his mouth kick up at that.

Reaching out, he sweeps the dust away, and then tugs the glove off one of his hands when a low hum fills the air, light flickering around the edges of the console's screen before flaring to life, pale blue-white.

A beat, then there's a soft chime.

Tim places his bare hand on the smooth glass of the console, watches the screen on his hand switch to red, prickle of warmth against his skin before it snaps over to green.

Tim waits until another chime, lower, and pulls his hand away. Turns as he hears a series of locks disengaging and looks down to see a section of the lab's floor sliding away revealing a set of stairs leading down.

A series of underground bunkers for the original colonists to retreat to when storm season hit in the days before the planet was terraformed.

The new inhabitants have enlarged on them, connected to them to create an underground burrow that reaches under the current settlement. Hidden entrances in strategic spots only a handful of people know about.

Tim descends the stairs. There's a small antechamber and blast door with a small covered panel set in the wall beside it, cameras pointed at the door with blinking red lights.

Tim bypasses the security panel and looks into the cameras as he pulls the hood of his cloak down, and says, “I'm calling in a favor.”

********

Smugglers and pirates and big fish with sharp, sharp teeth, and favors owed.

Red Hood cocks his head, and Tim wonders if he made a mistake coming here, even though it was the first thing – ally – that came to mind when Damian asked for help.

Favors owed, yes, but it goes both ways, and there's no real fondness in the Red Hood for the Consortium and one member of it in particular.

Still, he's their best bet for getting off the planet in one piece, to finding Bruce and getting to the bottom of this mess.

He has the numbers and sheer ruthlessness to make anyone else on this hunk of rock think twice before starting anything. 

And whether he likes it or not, this has to do with him as well. 

“What kind of trouble did you manage to stumble into this time?”

Tim shifts, sees Hoods thugs echo him.

Wonders, in an idle way, where Roy and Kory are.

Tim shrugs, helpless little smile.

There's really been one kind of trouble that hits as hard as this one for either of them.

Shifts in power within the Consortium are nothing new, it's only when rifts take form that things hang in the balance. 

Arrangements are made, and accidents that aren't really happen. 

Red Hood is a product of that, and in way, so is Tim.

The latest major shift in power left the Drake family with broken alliances and truces, left them vulnerable with enemies all around, and Tim had been the only one of them to survive it. 

He'd grabbed on to whispered rumors, left the core worlds behind on a search for - 

Tim hadn't known what to expect, what he'd find at the end of it, just that whatever it he did find was bound to be less dangerous than what he'd be leaving behind.

Luck, or something else was had led Tim to a small, dusty planet and the Red Hood.

“Family.”

********

“ _Drake_.”

Tim ignores Damian's scandalized hiss, Steph's amused smirk. The equally amused cant to Red Hood's head as he leads them to the bridge of one of his ships.

No one, not even Tim knows how many he has at any given time, which is the way Hood likes it. 

Hood laughs, turning away to where Roy's running last minute checks with Kory.

“Figured you'd come to us,” Hood says, gesturing to his partners. “These two decided to get the _Hellhound_ prepped.”

Roy waves a hand at them from the weapon's station, and Kory looks up for a moment from the co-pilot's chair, small smile on her lips. 

Tim looks at Hood – at Jason - eyes narrowing.

There's no expression to read with that helmet of his, no tells, but Tim's known Jason for years now. Can see the tension in his frame, what it's costing him to do this.

“Hood - “

“You call in a favor, you get it,” Jason says, like it's just that simple. “You know how it works out here.”

Tim stares at him.

The _Hellhound_ is a small, sleek thing bristling with weaponry and armor meant for a military class ship twice her size, and her engines are works of art.

A bruiser that moves like a dancer, fast and agile and vicious, and she's Jason's personal ship.

She's taking them to find _Bruce_.

Tim looks at Jason, and Jason looks back.

From the corner of his eye he sees Steph pushing Damian into one of the empty chairs before claiming one for herself.

“Leave it. We've got business that's been a long time in coming to deal with, and I, for one, am looking forward to it.” Jason says, dropping into the pilot's seat.

Tim knows he's not the only one who can hear the smirk, the quiet threat, _promise_ in his voice.

Tim smiles, slow because for all there there are smugglers and pirates and big fish with sharp, sharp teeth out here, there are things that even they run from.


End file.
